Workshop

Our homes become increasingly smart through modular hardware and software apps
controlling home automation functions such as setting the room temperature or
starting the washing machine. Also, mobile robots start to enter our homes as
vacuum cleaners, mobile cell phone platforms or toys. All of these come with
their own interfaces resulting not only in a multitude of different interaction
devices with different interaction philosophies. Additionally, the increasingly
embodied capabilities of smart devices, ranging from ambient actions (light,
sound..) to moving objects (robots, furniture...) yield to the overwhelming
amount of information and control that needs to be mastered within such a
convoluted environment. Yet, despite large research efforts, the main modality
of interaction with smart home devices is often still a challenging graphical
interface.

Such a complex situation opens up a range of new research questions pertaining
to the interaction with smart environments. How can they be made more intuitive
and adaptive? And how to deal with agency or explicit lack of it, i.e. whom to
address when specifying a command or a goal situation? In this workshop we want
to address the question how the various installments inside a smart environment
can be used as intuitive means of interaction.

This entails on the one hand questions regarding the human partner - in how far
do users profit from embodied interaction partners (e.g. virtual agents or
robots) as opposed to non-embodied devices? Do the different devices and agents
have to provide a coherent interaction? On the other hand, this entails
questions of situation awareness with respect to the interaction partner. How
can the environment be attentive to the inhabitants' and their visitors'
intentions without having to overhear all conversations and interactions that
are not addressed towards the environment?